None Shall Intrude Review

Have you ever dreamt of becoming the bad guy in a videogame, taking down all the heroes who dare to face you and attempt to steal your loot? Developed by Aeterna Ludi, None Shall Intrude is the perfect game to give you the experience of becoming a strong monster to destroy those pesky heroes. Will this card-battling game be a fun and unique experience, or will it feel like all the other card games out there?

The main menu shows you how massive your dragon is compared to the burning village they are towering over. Your dragon has 45,000 hit points for health; that seems like a lot, but when a large group of heroes attacks you at the same time, it may not be enough. You will need to be strategic with your attacks.

None Shall Intrude is played using a mouse and keyboard setup. This actually works great for this type of game where you are trying to easily select the card you want and place it on one of the tiny tiles on the screen. Trying to do this with a controller would probably end up being frustrating and take a lot longer to do. Music sounds like something you would hear in a movie, like when a huge monster, Godzilla, for example, is attacking the city. This fits perfectly for a game where you are playing as a large dragon trying to get revenge on the humans attacking you by capturing their lands.

None Shall Intrude is a roguelite card-battling game that has you using your deck of attack and defence cards to take down the foes attacking you. As a dragon, you have Earth, Fire, and Wind cards available to you. Fortunately, there is a super helpful Whelpling, a little dragon, who is ready to help you out and remind you how to fight as you have been sleeping for many decades.

The Whelpling reminds you of the basics for battling: you begin with three cards; my pull got me two Fireball attacks and another called Whirlwind. With the mouse, drag the card you want to play onto one of the tiles on the stage. The Whelpling gets you to use a Fireball card to char the one tile. Now by using the Whirlwind card in that same space, you will create a special interaction. The wind blows the charred spaces to nearby tiles. Follow this up by launching a Fireball on a charred space, and it will transform into a lava tile; if an enemy is standing on it at the end of the turn, they will take 300 damage. Once you are out of cards or have used up your three available attack points, end the turn. I have never played a lot of card-battling games before, but none had it where the cards you play interact with the last card played like this: it added a whole new strategy to the game!

While battling, you can see the amount of attack and health points your enemy has displayed above their head. The Huntress has 500 for attack; this is how much damage she will inflict if she is within range. Like your dragon, the heroes also have a deck of cards to play, but they will always do the same actions: they first play their respective cards, then move closer to you, then they’ll finally attack. If the heroes are getting too close to you, be sure to play attacks that will defeat the enemies in closest proximity first or use moves that will push them back.

During your turn, try to use momentum cards to inhale before you do any attacks. If Inhale is active, the exhale cards will trigger bonus abilities and make your attacks stronger. Use Firebreath against your foes; it will show how much damage you will inflict based on the tiles you select, so pick the spot where it maximises the amount of heroes you hit and hurts them the most. This is very useful for helping plan out your attacks.

In between fights, you are taken to the world map. Here, you can choose which area you would like to take over, and by hovering over the enemy nodes’ place, you can see what rewards you will get for defeating them and the difficulty of the fight. Keep in mind that stronger enemies give better rewards, so it will be worth your time to take them on. When you view the map, you will see regions where, if you defeat all the nodes in that area, you will capture the region. As you venture deeper, the stronger the enemies you will encounter. When you select a hero to battle, it doesn’t mean you will fight only one fighter; it could be a whole group of foes to defeat, but be sure to use the elemental combos to aid in the fight.

On the bottom of the world map screen, you can see how many moves you have left before the Kingdom Hero appears to challenge you again; that will be the final fight of your run. Every five moves you make, the kingdom will send a raid party to come after you. These characters are stronger and have great animated intros before the battle. The art in None Shall Intrude is great! Each of the large bosses you fight has an intro that shows the hero you are battling against in a vibrant, hand-painted style.

As you progress, you will earn new cards to use in your deck for battle against your foes. There is a great variety of attacks and defence moves to use; some can only be used once per turn, like a nuke, or others are used once and gone forever. It was fun to add more options to my repertoire to use against the heroes attacking me. It kept the game feeling fresh, so I wasn’t always doing the same thing over and over again.

When you are defeated, you will see the total amount of time you played, the amount of XP gained, your dragon’s level, new talent points gained, and if a new title was gained. Presented along with this are the cards in your deck for this run, relics, territories conquered, boss mechanics, and the heroes you had slain. If you decide to do another run, all these new bonuses you earned are available for you to use.

My only qualm with the game is that your run could go on for quite a while, so make sure you have time where you won’t be interrupted. At least when you come back to the game again later, there is no choice to continue, so you may be concerned that you have lost the progress you had gained. Fortunately, when you select the New Game option, you will see all the boss mechanics that you had unlocked, along with the different talents and available points, are there to use. Initially, I thought that my time would be wasted and I would have to start over.

If you enjoy playing card-battling games where you are trying to build the best deck possible, None Shall Intrude is a title to check out. Especially since you are trying to defeat the pesky heroes that have awoken you from your slumber. The big dragon just wants to sleep; it makes sense that they are grumpy and mad that they are forced to battle. The dragon really isn’t a bad guy; they are just misunderstood, and it was a tonne of fun attacking those pests responsible. There is a lot to learn here, but there are a lot of unique mechanics that set it apart from other card-battling games out there.